


broken by a blood red moon

by Reyavie



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Family Dynamic, One-Shot Collection, Sort Of, inexplicable change in verbal form in the third chapter (?), only tragic because that's the only thing you get from bloodborne, the author doesn't know why it happened either, work in progress maybe (?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-02-10 07:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18655732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyavie/pseuds/Reyavie
Summary: “My love? Will you tell Mother what is wrong?”There is a peculiar Yharnam madness to its inhabitants. Their waking world is threaded in nightmares, wide tapestries woven with fear, blood, old conspiracies. Their sanity hangs by a single silk thread and it swings, swings, swings in the light of blood red moon.





	1. Chapter 1

**xxxXXXxxx**

The Hunter cannot remember the sunlight. She has no life beyond the dark streets, no job beyond the one that requires she sleeps by corners with a weapon in her hand. She has no friends except a sick man on an old window, no family, no country. Maybe she did once (before that first death) but something fractured with every wound, splintered like thunder and never returned even as her lungs swallowed air and her body clawed its way from the ground. She is the Hunter and so she hunts. There is nothing else to her, she thinks sometimes.

“Tell me, are you alright?”

The old lady that speaks to her as she descends the steps. It is an uncommon event. Arianna frowns from her place and she seems as confused as the Hunter herself feels. There is kindness in the aging voice, little gestures beaconing the fighter over when merely days before she had spat upon her feet.

Once she comes close, rugged fingers close around her blood-stained gloves. Blood rushes through the Hunter’s veins. It beats against her temples and she’s afraid, afraid as she never is in the Nightmares.

“My love? Will you tell Mother what is wrong?”

There is a peculiar Yharnam madness to its inhabitants. Their waking world is threaded in nightmares, wide tapestries woven with fear, blood, old conspiracies. Their sanity hangs by a single silk thread and it swings, swings, swings in the light of blood red moon.

“Come here,” the little lady says, tugging on her red gloves with ridiculous strength so she can sit by her side. “Come rest.”

Why, oh why does she, thinking unsteadily by a mother’s knees for what seems like the first time (because it might as well be). She doesn’t know this woman (she can’t remember, she has no name, she’s not hers) and her old hand rests on her hair, thin fingers combing through the tresses. Again, again, unheeding of dirt, grime and blood. Uncaring of color and shape. Uncaring her child is likely dead and this Hunter is not her.

“Do not worry,” the old lady whispers (as if sharing a secret; as if lost all sanity; as if she feels the Hunter shaking underneath her touch). “Mother will make it all better.”

The Hunter raises her eyes to the oldened face (if she childishly pretends they are the same color as hers, who can blame her? There is a little grey at the edges like hers. She can be from Yarnham as well, she knows all the nooks and crannies, all the dark alleys, monsters and shadows. If she believes, she is not a woman without country and a spectre with no life beyond the hunt).

“You already did. I’m fine,” she lies. This lie is a little like she pictures love to be. Like the Sun. Warm, light brimming through an old church, a little kindness in this world that feels so hostile.

The Hunter has no past, no present, no future. The Hunter has a weapon and armor. She has tainted blood and no name. And in the Old Cathedral there is a little old woman who has gone mad, believes her to be another and calls her child.

It has to be enough. She has nothing else.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion piece from the Old woman's perspective. Named Eliza for narrative purposes.

Every time without fail, Eliza sees the girl stumbling away from that Lamp. Her face is contorted with horror and sweat drips from her skin, soaks her clothing even as she struggles to push air into her lungs. Every time, those awful eyes of hers flit around like a lost bird and Blood covers her from head to toe. Softly, sweetly, it drips onto the stones below. Oh, how she knows that blood well. There was blood at her door. There was blood offered to her for every little thing; blood of her neighbors, of family and friends and lost.

This woman is not her daughter. This girl is younger and stronger than the one she lost to the damned blood. She’s taller too, her blonde hair tightly tied on the top of her hair presumably to keep the brunt of the grime away from it, a body thick and wide, suggesting the strength that leads her to hold the crude axe with such certainty. This Outsider has blue eyes. A little grey at the corners, wider than necessary. She doesn’t know about the odd place the Hunter came from, but she would never be considered a beauty in Their city.

(Not like her little girl, with her whisper of a body, a little bird with tanned skin and enchanting features. The mere idea of her holding a weapon would be enough to make Eliza laugh, if she still knew how to do such a thing. The more she sees the Outsider, she more she hates her for living when her Melia did not. Why should she? How could she dare to stand in front of her, whole and hearty, when the rest of her girl is likely on some street, ready to break any passer-by into two?)

Every time the Hunter stumbles through, those (wide awful) eyes are covered in tears.

“Come along, my love. Rest by me,” Eliza offers.

She knows what they think. She is insane, they whisper, she has gone mad because who, who can look at the blonde giant and think her her daughter? Yarham makes its people suffer after all and she, old, trapped in a body without the strength it once held, suffered more than most. Her mind has gone. But they are wrong. They are unkind, as this city has made them all.

That is all she is doing. Giving this child a little kindness.

(And if on the way, she allows herself to be deceived, that is no one’s business but her own.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my writer's block has been so ridiculous that I'm pretty sure I screwed up this premise but i don't care. I just wanted to get something out. Based on the "Childhood's beginning" ending.

**xxxXXXxxx**

The Dweller had not moved from the side of the lamp for all the days after the end of the hunt. The survivors had attempted to chase him out, of course. Dead or not, Yarnham still belonged to the ashes of the healing church and the Cathedral was one of their very last symbols. There was no place for a dirty beggar, even in the middle of a broken structure covered in blood of the Fallen. However, who was left to drag him out? Only beasts and those poor souls who had succumbed to the plague.

He waited, day after day and the nights before and after those. The Hunter had come and listened, the Dweller knew she had listened to his very last request. Her voice had been so soft, _are you sure you want me to remain by you_? Of course, he did! Of course, he had! Who else had looked after those who had meant nothing to her?

“You said you would be my friend.”

The hunter returned, not with the following day but with the light of the crescent moon.

Tiny hands with minuscule fingers lightly rested upon the hand of a wooden (breathing living) statue which stood guard by her side. A small creature, porcelain fair, little wisp covered in light hair, long bones threatening to pull out of her skin as if the body itself did not know well where it wanted to grow. No blood, no weapons, nothing but a young girl in a dark dress and a living doll standing where the lamp had once been. Looking straight at him as if nothing else would ever matter.

“Kind hunter?”

The expression on the child’s face did not change. There were similarities in her stance with the adult he had known - he could see those - only she smiled mechanically, not the soft grin the Hunter would give him before. It was a little empty; just there, a decoration like any other.

He did not doubt the child’s identity. Who would doubt anything under the walls of the Great city?

“But you don’t need me. You’re… so much more.” His hands twitched on his lap, grabbing at the edges of his sleeves and rubbing the frail fabric repeatedly as if the motion itself would delete the words he had once said. Why had he asked her that? She was important! “You’re so Large. Bigger. More important,” he added as if it still needed to be said.

Small knees folded in front of her as the girl knelt to his eye level. Her eyes were blue. Weren’t they? He blinked, trying to focus on those orbs which had once been soft and gentle – and even a little scared.  They had changed, just as much as she had. Grey and large, they sparked with light, little trails of red flashing sharply, blood red, red as the moon that had colored their sky for the long night.

“I am not human.” Her voice was childish and not. It was one but it was a chorus, celestial and beautiful and strident. The man fought the urge to clamp his fingers inside his ears, fill them with wax even as he wanted to record those sounds to keep him company for all eternity. “I ate the Gods, I devoured them, I took them into me so they would not dare to return. And now, I am…”

“The Good hunter,” the doll completed. “You are what you are. What you have always been.”

Annoyance sparked on the little girl’s features. It was annoyance, wasn’t it? The dweller felt a shiver running through his veins; as when the Vicar himself had noticed his presence, at the corner, in the mass where he should not be and he was so ashamed that all he wanted to do was to cover his nose and mouth and die, die right there.

The Doll did not seem to notice.

“I ate the Gods. I ate them whole,” the child repeated in that voice which was a song in itself. “I took them inside and they ate me too; they smashed me into something like them that they could hate. That they could understand. And what is this, I do not know.”

The smile was mechanic, was there, set and permanent as the stones below their feet.

“But they couldn’t take all of me. I remembered you. My Eileen. My Doll. My Djura. You hoped for living creatures, you told me to bring them here where they would be safe. You told me to save them.”

Like she remembered she had to smile. Just like that. It was what humans did.

“You are kind, dweller. Like my Eileen. Like my Djura. You can make me just a little, just a tiny little bit me.”

Her form was human as human could be but it shook like a painting reflected in water; there was effort in standing there, contained underneath that frail skin that seemed ready to fall apart into something larger (greater, inhumane).

“Will you come with me?”

That small hand was extended towards him. In the faint light of the crescent moon, it was almost translucent, light and dream made solid by pure effort. He was not worthy enough to reach. He was not.

“Would you keep me kind?”

But she had come back for him.

Her hand was warm.

 


End file.
